All such facts as these--and they could be collected in great numbers--indicate the real office of alcohol in our modern life: _It enables us to violate the laws of nature without immediate suffering and speedy destruction_. This appears to be its chief office, in conjunction with its ally, tobacco. Those tailors would have soon died or escaped but for the gin; and those horsemen would have given up and perished but for the whiskey. Nature commanded those soldiers to rest, but they were enabled, for the moment, to disobey her. Doubtless Nature was even with them afterwards; but, for the time, they could _defy_ their mother great and wise. Alcohol supported them in doing wrong. Alcohol and tobacco support half the modern world in doing wrong. That is their part--their _rôle_, as the French investigators term it--in the present life of the human race. Dr. Great Practice would naturally go to bed at ten o'clock, when he comes in from his evening visits. It is his cigar that keeps him up till half past twelve, writing those treatises which make him famous, and shorten his life. Lawyer Heavy Fee takes home his papers, pores over them till past one, and then depends upon whiskey to quiet his brain and put him to sleep. Young Bohemian gets away from the office of the morning paper which enjoys the benefit of his fine talents at three o'clock. It is two mugs of lager-bier which enable him to endure the immediate consequences of eating a supper before going home. This is mad work, my masters; it is respectable suicide, nothing better. There is a paragraph now making the grand tour of the newspapers, which informs the public that there was a dinner given the other evening in New York consisting of twelve courses, and keeping the guests five hours at the table. For five hours, men and women sat consuming food, occupying half an hour at each viand. What could sustain human nature in such an amazing effort? What could enable them to look into one another's faces without blushing scarlet at the infamy of such a waste of time, food, and digestive force? What concealed from them the iniquity and deep vulgarity of what they were doing? The explanation of this mystery is given in the paragraph that records the crime: "There was a different kind of wine for each course." Even an ordinary dinner-party,--what mortal could eat it through, or sit it out, without a constant sipping of wine to keep his brain muddied, and lash his stomach to unnatural exertion. The joke of it is, that we all know and confess to one another how absurd such banquets are, and yet few have the courage and humanity to feed their friends in a way which they can enjoy, and feel the better for the next morning.